baja

I love the look of a southwest style painted steer skull. And I thought it would be fun to paint one myself. When we were in Baja last Spring I got the chance. A man stopped by our place one day with a pick up truck full of plain, white steer skulls. All of them were beautiful. It’s often hard to find ones that are so complete and not deteriorated. I chose one to paint and purchased it. We cleaned…

I TAKE A MOMENT to stretch to relieve the stress in my shoulders I AM GRATEFUL to be spending time in Todos Santos, Baja, Mexico I AM FEELING full from a healthy dinner I CAN SEE I’m staying up to late and should go to bed earlier I AM HEARING Bonnie Raitt on Spotify I AM CREATING a painting with two whales, a palm tree and the sea I AM MISSING having close friends near by to visit with I…

If you’re like many people you go online to find information on how to do things. However, we found a lot of outdated information on how to apply for temporary residency in Mexico so I thought I would share our process of getting a Temporary Residency Card. This is for those Americans who intend to live in Mexico (for non-lucrative purposes) and obtain a temporary residency card for the first time. This is what we did: First I emailed the…

On our road trip over to the East Cape in Baja, we also went to visit the waterfall at Santiago. Bajainsider says, “Santiago is a small pueblo located 46 km north of the, Los Cabos Airport (SJD), San Jose Del Cabo, Baja Sur. At about 42km you make a left turn off Highway 1 to Santiago…” Follow the signs (or ask someone like we did) to a rancho officially called the Rancho Ecológico Sol de Mayo. There will be a…

We headed over to the East Cape of Baja, Mexico to explore the area around Los Barriles. We wanted to look for great camp spots on the beach. We love camping and swimming in the beautiful water on the east side of Baja. This trip we were lucky to discover Snorkel Beach. We stopped in Los Barriles to get groceries and supplies and asked a couple people about where to camp. We were told about a place called Snorkel Beach…

This is post 8 in my 10 post blog series on Beth Kempton’s PDF titled “Zen and the Art of Doing what you Love.” The Steps and journal prompts are taken from Beth’s PDF. STEP 8: TRAVEL LIGHT Journal prompt: What could be possible if you just tuned out the negativity and followed your heart? This is an appropriate journal prompt because although Beth is talking about emotions and getting rid of negativity, the shoulds and should nots and following…

Our last trip to Baja was in July. We had an awesome time. Here is another post about our trip. When we’re in Baja, just about every evening we either go to the beach or go up to the upstairs patio to enjoy the sunset. We always are in awe of the beauty! If we’re lucky, we can see the spot of green glow that the sun makes right before it goes down over the horizon. We pause and wonder…

I love putting botanical imagery in my paintings. I’m inspired by the flowers and palm trees I find in baja. And the plumeria and white jasmine smell heavenly! What flowers are you growing in your garden?

This is the last post about our road trip down to Todos Santos in Baja Mexico from Prescott, AZ. We headed out of San Carlos to the Topolobampo ferry and got there 3 hours ahead of time, as the bajaferries.com website suggested. If we knew the ferry was going to leave at 8 pm instead of 5 pm, we might not have rushed to get there! We got our ferry ticket and walked the dogs and gave them water before we got…

Here’s a little video of me in the studio and then the continuing story of our trip to Todos Santos, Baja, Mexico. After we got our auto import permit for our truck outside of Nogales we were on our way to San Carlos where we were going to spend the night. It’s a pretty uneventful drive. Straight roads almost the whole way so that it feels like you’re just driving and driving and driving and the landscape is pretty…

We’re driving to Todos Santos, Baja, Mexico again. This time we’re taking a new route. My truck isn’t packed to the gills yet but it will be soon! Greg is building stuff and getting things ready. Cody can’t wait. Here’s our route. Stay tuned for more.

It took me awhile to finally make a video of my Baja art studio but here it is. We were there in May and June of this year. I’ve had people ask me what it looks like so I thought this would help you visualize it. It’s pretty nice to have walls and big windows with shutters to let the light in. They also keep out the dust and wind when it picks up. Take a look.

We made it to Todos Santos, Baja California, Mexico. Our trip odometer just turned over to 3,000 when we pulled into town. Wow, a 3,000 mile road trip. We thought that was pretty cool. I’ve made previous blog posts about traveling down Baja before so this time I will just blog about a few highlights from our road trip. We wanted to explore a new beach on this trip so we chose Bahia San Basilia which is located on the…

“Prayer flags are colorful panels or rectangular cloths often found strung along mountain ridges and peaks in the Himalayas to bless the surrounding countryside. Unknown in other branches of Buddhism, prayer flags are believed to have originated with Bon, which predated Buddhism in Tibet. Traditionally they are woodblock-printed with texts and images.” -Wikipedia Our neighbors down in Baja had prayer flags attached to the railings on the top level of their home. It’s a tall brown house. The flags were…

We’re back in Bend, Oregon. We left Todos Santos on the 25th. We stopped on the Sea of Cortez at Playa Escondida for a couple days of R & R. We love camping on the beach! We snorkeled and swam and caught the rays! It was hot! About 105, maybe more. We built a great little camp with a palapa hut. The views were beautiful! The water was my favorite color! I call it mediterranean green. But maybe I should…

We played tourist today. You can see my friend from Seattle below with Greg. She flew in on Sunday and we picked her up in Cabo. Today we wandered around Todos Santos showing her the sights. First, we stopped at the Cultural Center and looked at art and learned some history of the area. I like this Frida Kahlo painting below. There are lots of little galleries and shops to explore. This carved door below is at artist Charles Stewart’s…

One way to bring a little color into your home is to make colorful garden planters using paint and recycled washing machine drums. I painted the one above last year. It’s great for cactus because they don’t need much water. I made a bright flower motif one this year. I’ll show you the progression of one I decorated with a cactus design below. I started with an empty washing machine drum that I cleaned up to look like this. Next…

Last year we transplanted some banana trees in a new garden in front of our casita. It was one of the last things we did before we headed back to Oregon last year. Before we arrived this year we wondered how much the garden had grown. Everything really took off and especially the banana trees! I didn’t know much about how bananas grow before we had banana trees. So I thought you might like to know more about them too.…

Where does the time go? I meant to make more posts this week but have been busy with painting in the studio and working on our casita. We have a big project happening in our kitchen. We hired some help to create our new palido counter tops. It’s quite a project and takes a few days to complete. So things are a bit chaotic at our place. They’re doing a great job. I love the color of them. A yellowish…

I unplugged last Friday and tried not to use my computer except for email so I could spend all my time in the art studio working on six new paintings on board. I have some minis and medium sized paintings in the works as well but I put those on hold to concentrate on the six. I’ve accomplished a lot! I’ll share a bit of what I’ve done and then I’m back to the studio to keep working on them.…

We were walking home from our neighbor’s place on Saturday night and we saw this: Venus above the moon. Sure was gorgeous! Made me think of all the wonderful sunsets and night skies we’ve seen over the years. I save my sunset photos and looking at them brings back memories of camping on the beach or sitting with friends, eating chips and salsa and watching as that beautiful golden orb sets for another day. peace.

Granted, it is has been gorgeous sunny weather since we’ve been in Baja. Just beautiful! But not every weekend is about the sun for us. One of the things we do while we’re down here in Baja is work on our little casita. We did a lot last year for sure but there is lots more we’d like to do. This past weekend I tore out the tile on the kitchen counter tops that we’re going to replace with either…

Last Friday we camped at Playa Santispac on Bahía Concepción on the Sea of Cortez. We headed toward Todos Santos on Saturday morning. On this leg of our trip we traveled very long, straight stretches of roadway through a whole lot of nothing but desert for hours on end. Although we did get to see some goats when we stopped for road construction work on the highway. You can barely make out the goat amongst the bushes below. We pulled over…

Last Friday we headed out toward Bahía Concepción on the Sea of Cortez from Bahía de Los Angeles. This is an area that we really love. We spent 3 days there last year on our return trip up Baja and this time wanted to explore a different playa (beach) in that same area. First we stopped in Guerro Negro and got our tourist visas and passports stamped at the immigration office. We were glad we were there on a Friday…